


the blues have run the game

by indigostohelit



Category: Christian Bible (Old Testament), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, תנ"ך | Tanakh
Genre: Biblical References, M/M, Music, Outdoor Sex, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, Tragic Romance, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 16:21:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19406941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/pseuds/indigostohelit
Summary: Halfway between the Beginning and the Apocalypse, Crowley visits the court of King Saul, and runs into a prince, a war camp, and a songbook.





	the blues have run the game

**Author's Note:**

> On the one hand, this is the most Torah study I've done since I graduated from seventh grade. On the other hand.
> 
> Biblical research notes at the end, title from Jackson C. Frank's song of the same name.

“What we could really do with round here,” says Crowley, “is a bit of _music_.”

It lands beautifully. The king, sprawled like a lion on his throne, snaps up from his drunken half-lounge; his knuckles are pale round his golden cup. Crowley watches his mouth open, watches the war behind his shark-black eyes: Crowley's guest-right, Crowley’s promises of gifts, matched up against the rage in his gut, the bile rushing to his throat.

“A wood-harp,” Crowley goes on, blithely, “or a piper, or a couple of dancing girls. Or a singer, even. Haven’t you got anyone who can sing in this country?” He almost adds, _Or have they all hidden themselves away_ , but bites his tongue at the last moment; there’s a difference between having a joke and tipping his hand.

Saul’s throat works briefly. He puts the cup down. Crowley doesn’t break eye contact, doesn’t twitch, just keeps smiling into his face, just keeps watching his half-parted lips, his reddened eyes, his mouth wet with wine. He’s been a guest here now for two months, Crowley has, eating the king’s stores, sleeping in his palace. He’s learnt the king’s moods; he’s learnt how far the king can be pushed before he snaps.

“Father,” says a voice to the king’s right. Crowley doesn’t look away, but the king does, a startled shiver, as if he’s been woken from a dream. There’s a hand on his wrist. “The Hakmonite’s daughter. Avital. She dances.”

“And sings?” says Crowley, pleasantly.

“And plays the timbrel,” says the tall young man wearing the golden circlet, and meets Crowley’s gaze with one eyebrow raised.

Crowley considers the situation. He could push things. He _ought_ to push things, really; it’s the kind of thing he’d do if he were the faintly foreign over-moneyed lord he’s pretending to be, greedy and boorish, promising riches and armies and delivering nothing, demanding most often the thing his hosts least wish to give. And Downstairs has given him time to make trouble here, but not infinite time; the quicker he’s gone, the happier they’ll be.

The prince doesn't look away from Crowley, and he doesn't move his hand from the king's wrist. His face is set, serious—but when the king glances towards the spear on the wall, Crowley sees a flash of humour there, swift and black.

On the other hand.

“Actually,” he says, putting down his own wine and rising, “I think I’ve had enough. Excellent, as always. Really fantastic wine. Nearly top twenty.” Saul’s face darkens; Crowley smiles at him again, brilliantly, and edges past three minor princes to the end of his bench, stepping deliberately on their feet as he goes. “Looking forward to more tomorrow, your Majesty. _Wonderful_ lamb. Good night.”

Jonathan catches up with him in the hall outside, as Crowley’s shrugging his overcoat off his shoulders; human clothes have gotten wonderfully complicated since he last spent any time up top, but damn, are they _hot_. “She really is very good, Remesh,” the prince says, sounding a little reproachful. “If you wanted music.”

Crowley does not want music. “Oh,” he says, “I wasn’t really looking for a dancer, I suppose.” Pause; bait, hook. “My head,” he says, “it aches. You know I don’t mean to complain. It's just, well. I thought any _really_ fine court would have a singer every night.”

“There’s a girl who works in the gardens,” says Jonathan. “Malkah. A Khamaite. She’s—” He exhales. “I don’t know that she’s soothing.”

“Mm,” says Crowley. “No boys?”

He expects Jonathan to get awkward, to get angry, to walk away. What he doesn’t expect is Jonathan’s eyelids flickering shut, his face going still.

“Not any more,” he says. He doesn’t sound angry. He sounds—

“All right,” says Crowley. Jonathan looks at him with surprise; Crowley shrugs, uncomfortable, on the defensive and not sure why. “If there aren’t, there aren’t. Nothing to be done.”

“Remesh,” says Jonathan. He looks unhappy, now, discomfort in his long-lashed eyes, so like and unlike his father’s. “May I ask a favour of you?”

Crowley relaxes. This is his territory; he _loves_ people owing him favours. “Of course you can,” he says. “Ask away.”

Jonathan says, “When you’re at table. When you’re in front of my father. Don’t bring up singers again.”

Crowley schools his face into something half apology, half confusion. “I’m sorry,” he says, “didn’t mean to step on any toes. Have I broken some rule? Only you people have so _many_ of them. No offence meant.”

Jonathan’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “No rule. Just a favour.”

“Just a favour,” Crowley echoes, and smiles back, feeling curiously uncomfortable. “All right. No singers in front of the king.”

Jonathan’s smile drops, but he takes Crowley’s hand, and presses it. “Thank you,” he says.

His skin is very warm. “It’s nothing,” says Crowley, because he likes to lie.

The forest is dark, this close to the end of the month, with the leaves thick above him and only a sliver of moon bobbing above the trees. Crowley is a rat, then a whip-tailed little lizard, then a stinging fly, a draft lifting him up through the undergrowth.

He lands on a branch with his wings buzzing and surveys the night through a thousand angled lenses. To his human eyes, the forest had been dark, teeming with unknown dangers. From here he can see the motion of the wind through the upper branches, the passage of creeping things beneath. The noise of frogs and night-insects. In the distance, the crackle of a campfire. Low voices. Metal jangling, softly.

A little bird, dun and downy-bellied, settles itself beside him and begins to groom fussily. After some time, it says, “Well?”

“They seem like they’re having a time of it,” says Crowley.

Aziraphale cocks his head and frowns with a distinctly un-bird-like expression. “Yours or mine?”

“Yours,” says Crowley, “though mine as well, I suppose. I haven’t seen a king so bothered since—” He considers the math. “Three hundred years ago, wasn’t it? With the frogs, and the darkness, and the— well.”

“Yes,” says Aziraphale uncomfortably. “Well.”

“ _Well,”_ says Crowley, “I just mean they’ve been out here for a good while, is all. Suffering insects, and cold, and lions, sort of thing. A bit like the Beginning. Seems—” He shrugs what shoulders the fly-body has. “Difficult.”

“The people give them food and shelter,” says Aziraphale, “to honour their true king.”

“Yeah,” says Crowley, “right. People handing out all the food they’ve got, out of respect for G—the anointed, to the nice men with the big clubs. Honour, I get it.”

The bird flutters unhappily. “Well,” it says, and then, with an effort, “Well—what _about_ yours? Aren’t they preparing for some sort of raid on him? They usually are, these days.”

“What?” says Crowley. “No. They’re a bit busy with—” He considers. “Well. Me, I suppose.”

Aziraphale is silent. “Then I ought to thank you,” he says, after a while.

“ _Please_ don’t,” says Crowley, with great feeling. “I’d never hear the end of it. Anyway, you must have been as much a distraction when you were at court. How long did you stay for? Half a year, after David left?”

“Was it?” says Aziraphale, surprised, and then a little guilty: “Oh. I suppose it was. Only their wine really was _very_ good.”

An ant skitters up the branch, flicking furious scent-warnings. Crowley kicks it with one skinny black leg, watches it go tumbling into the night. “That prince,” he says, “there’s something about him. I don’t know. You’re sure your people don’t want him?”

“Quite sure,” says the bird. “ _Very_ sure. I don’t suppose you ever met Goliath.”

Crowley waves his proboscis noncommittally. “More Hastur's area, the Philistines. I try to stay away. There’s just nothing much to _do_.”

“Well,” says Aziraphale, “David’s our man. Take it from me.” From deep within the forest, there’s a clang of metal, and a chorus of rough laughter, and he jumps, nearly tumbling to the ground. After a moment, he settles, grooming himself in embarrassment. “Or don’t, I suppose,” he says. “At the rate they’re working, we’ll all find out soon enough.”

“Soon enough,” Crowley echoes, and flutters his own wings to cover his unease. “Yeah.”

Aziraphale shuffles his feet on the little branch. “Please change shape,” he says, stiffly. “It’s getting very difficult not to eat you.”

The fly twitches and shivers up into the air, where it loops, once, and then shrugs itself into a man, sharp-faced and slouching. “You change as well, then,” he says. “Wouldn’t want to risk an sorcery charge. They take that seriously, around here.”

The bird without warning is Aziraphale, dressed in a pale tunic, looking nervous and faintly blotchy. “Yes,” he says, “well. It’s not as if you _don’t_ consort with demons.”

“Consort,” says Crowley. “Yeah. Tell that to my datebook.” He shakes his head. “I ought to find my rooms, it’s bloody cold out here. This isn’t meant to be the desert?”

“Forest,” says Aziraphale, “the desert was the century before last, you remember,” but he looks distracted, suddenly.

“Whichever,” says Crowley, fiddling with his shawl, “it’s like ice. Makes you want to go to the other side of the planet. Drill a hole right Down.”

“Come share the fire,” says Aziraphale.

Crowley lets the shawl go. “What?”

“Come share the fire,” Aziraphale repeats, looking determined, if nervous. “Have a—a leg of lamb, or something. Rest for a while.”

“Now who’s consorting with demons,” says Crowley, astonished. “You aren’t worried I’ll bring secrets back? To Saul?” Aziraphale looks surprised at the very idea, and Crowley makes a face, waves at him. “Forget it. You aren’t thinking. We’ll meet up tomorrow night—”

“I am thinking,” says Aziraphale, his face stiff. “I mean it. I do.”

Crowley stares at him. After a while he says, “Why?”

“Because,” says Aziraphale; his face does something complicated. “Because—I don’t know. Because they’re nice.”

“Nice?” says Crowley disbelievingly. “The men with the big clubs?”

“They’re nice,” Aziraphale repeats stubbornly. “It’s nice.” He’s silent for a moment. “It would be nice, if you shared the fire. For, er. For me.”

Crowley tries very hard to think of something to say.

The fire isn’t far, but it’s surrounded by soldiers. The men—all the men that Crowley can see, anyway—look like they’ve been carved out of mountains, without much rock left over. The firelight doesn’t pick out much, just the edge of a jaw, a nose, the feathers on an arrow-shaft.

“No closer,” says one of them sharply, once Aziraphale and Crowley are close enough that even human eyes can pick them out. “Who’s there?”

Aziraphale coughs. “It’s me,” he says. “This is—”

One of the other bulky men shoots upward, his hand to his hip. “No strangers,” he barks; Crowley takes an involuntary step backwards.

“Shammah,” says a voice, soft and tired, “hold.”

Crowley had expected—well. He isn’t sure what he’d expected. Another giant like Shammah; a man with a square jaw and a spark in his eye, all muscle and noise, thick as marble besides.

The man beside the fire, his elbows propped on his knees, still looks like a boy. His jaw is smooth, his mouth small and soft and curled down. He’s not muscled so much as wiry; too-thin, like half the men at this camp, too-thin and too-small. His hair’s falling into his eyes.

“A stranger,” he says, in that sweet, exhausted voice, “and a guest. Ezraphael, this is a friend of yours?”

Aziraphale opens his mouth, then closes it. “I know him,” he says, eventually.

David’s raised eyebrow reminds Crowley of nothing so much as, strangely, the young prince, in Saul’s palace acres away. It’s unsettling to see it there, an unexpected echo. An unexpected harmony.

“If Ezraphael will vouch for him, he is a guest,” he says to Shammah. “Set a place for him by the fire.” He quirks a smile. “Who knows? He may be an angel in disguise.”

The fire is hardly worth the name at this hour of the night, red and dying. Men are curled around it, talking in low voices, cleaning dull iron swords by its faint light. Crowley huddles into his own body on his sheepskin, trying to warm himself. It isn’t working.

“You’ve known Ezraphael for a long time?” says David. Crowley jumps; the boy has come up on his right side, quieter than a human has a right to be.

“Oh,” he says, “yeah, nearly forever.”

“He’s an interesting man,” says David, “isn’t he.”

Crowley finds himself smiling, and is glad the firelight hides it. “Interesting,” he says. “Yeah.”

A night-bird calls out above them. David makes a low, thoughtful noise in his throat. “You grew up together,” he says. “You’re kinsmen.”

“Ah,” says Crowley. “Mm. Yes. A little bit. Only I—left.”

“He talks about you, sometimes,” says David. Crowley startles badly, this time, too badly to hide; but David doesn’t seem to see it, doesn’t even look in his direction. “Not by name,” he says, “of course. Only about an old friend, a close companion. Someone he knew; someone who knew him.” He pauses; the fire is flickering in his eyes, two moving mirrors. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says. “He missed you a great deal.”

“Oh,” says Crowley. “Er. I think he might have been talking about, erm. A different friend.”

“Was he?” says David, politely. “I hadn’t understood him to be a man with a great number of friends.”

“He is,” says Crowley, firmly. “He’s got loads of friends, probably. Consorting with them all the time. Probably misses one of them. I’m sure they miss him. Who wouldn’t? Excuse me.” He stands, rapidly, and dusts off his knees. David's eyebrows are going up. “I’m just going to go and. Go.”

The flight back through the forest is frantic and haphazard; Crowley narrowly avoids hitting several trees. He tumbles through his own window as a bird, one of the little dust-coloured things Aziraphale had been earlier, and collapses a man into his bed-pillows. On one wall of the room there’s a fire, one of the servants must have stoked it earlier, and that’s right—that’s how it ought to be, ill-gotten gains and servants and palaces full of temptations, this is his place, this palace, this is where he's supposed to be. This is his job.

He needs sleep, is all, a solid hour’s sleep and a drink and sunlight in his face. He needs to clear his head. He needs to do some work, some really nasty work, and he needs to act an adult, and he needs to stop talking about things that don’t concern him.

Crowley, as a rule, avoids thinking about Up There. This includes: Michael; Gabriel; Uriel; halos; harps; cloud cities; wars; winning; losing; the heavenly choir.

For example: he doesn’t think about harmonies. For example: he doesn’t think about crescendos. For example: he doesn’t think about standing in a crowd, shoulder to shoulder, wing to wing, the breath huge and waiting inside him. For example: he doesn’t think about performing, one voice in many and the many into One, before the face of—

The tunes came pre-written. Famously.

Not that Crowley ever wrote his own. Not that he’d ever wanted to, really; that was more _himself’s_ area, and much good had it done all of them. Crowley had always preferred to sing rather than write, and to listen rather than sing. He still does.

He still does; and besides, he hasn’t sung in a very long time.

Jonathan in Saul’s gardens is a sight to see, sitting straight-backed on a spread purple cloth laden with fruit and cheese and wine. His golden circlet is lying on the grass behind him; when he sees Crowley approaching, his fingers twitch towards it, and then go still.

“Lovely morning,” says Crowley, sauntering towards him.

“Yes,” says Jonathan. “It is. Thank you for coming.”

“Course,” says Crowley, surprised. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Jonathan shrugs, a rippling motion, without meeting his eyes. “I heard you weren’t in your rooms last night,” he says, almost offhandedly.

It sounds like a non sequitur; it isn’t, in a way Crowley can’t quite parse. “I went for a walk,” he says, uncomfortably defensive again. “Wanted some air.”

“Hm,” says Jonathan, and before Crowley can push him on it, he gestures to the spread of food around them, wide and deliberately magnanimous. Crowley can see the prince in him turn on, as easily as flame catching a wick. “Please—eat. Let me pour you some wine.”

The wine is good. Crowley lets it linger in his mouth, licks his lips. For a moment he thinks he feels Jonathan's eyes on him—but when he looks, Jonathan is busily slicing a fig, the little knife in his hands glinting in the sunlight. “Finished the evening all right, then?” he says, to make Jonathan look up. “After I left? I half expected to see the king hanging around here.”

Jonathan’s smile is a little tight. “My father is sleeping in this morning,” he says— _hungover_ , Crowley translates with some satisfaction. “He’d like you to attend him, later in the afternoon. Until then, you and I will have to make do with each other’s company.”

“Hm,” says Crowley. “Well. Do tell me if he’s avoiding me.”

Jonathan looks up, finally, and puts the little knife down. “I don’t understand you sometimes, Remesh,” he says.

Crowley smiles at him, unsettled. “What’s to understand?”

“If I knew,” says Jonathan, and shakes his head, tilts his head towards the sun. “I think you—remind me of someone. A man I knew, once.”

“Oh, do I,” says Crowley, delighted. Aziraphale’s going to _hate_ this.

“Yes,” says Jonathan. “A friend.”

“Go on like this, you’ll make me feel like I’m not special,” says Crowley. “What was he like, this mystery friend? Intelligent? Well-mannered? Handsome?”

Instead of answering, Jonathan turns his face up to the sun. Crowley watches the light slant across his skin, how the shadows pool behind him. The faint prickle of stubble on his jaw; the dark spot of a mole just off the hollow of his throat; his collarbones, fanning out to his shoulders. Crowley thinks, involuntarily, of wings.

“He was intelligent,” says Jonathan, eventually. “Yes. The things he would say, the things he would tell me—yes, he was well-mannered. Strangely mannered. He surprised me.”

“Strangely mannered,” says Crowley. “I like _that_. Did he cause half as much trouble as me, then?” Jonathan's face goes tight.“All your funny rules, I mean,” Crowley says quickly, unsure what he's done wrong. “I expect he forgot half of them. Ate the wrong meat with his left fork at dinner, or something.”

“No,” says Jonathan. “He was a Judaite.” He pauses. “He was a singer.”

Crowley gulps too much wine to cover his sharp shock of understanding, and feels his cheeks go hot. “I thought you meant A—another foreigner,” he says. “A guest. Like me.”

“Remesh,” says Jonathan, sounding amused. His earlier princeliness has drained away, leaving only a curious solemnity; his smile is out of place below his dark eyes. “Would you be at all pleased if I said we’d ever had a guest like you?”

“Well,” says Crowley, and grins. “You can’t spend all your time thinking up ways to please me.”

“Can’t I?” says Jonathan, softly.

Crowley sits very still. Jonathan’s eyes are half-closed. He’s rolling a grape between his fingers, not quite idly. Crowley watches his hand move, brown and sea-purple, flesh over flesh.

He meets the prince's gaze. Jonathan’s lips quirk, a little. Slowly, deliberately enough to be unmistakable, he lifts the fruit to his mouth and bites down.

It’s a very simple sin, this one. Crowley’s done it before. He’s practically an expert.

Jonathan’s mouth is warm, and sour from the wine. Crowley tastes it, carefully, the way he’d taste water from a stream, to see if it was good to drink. It’s better than good. He leans in, leans forward, pressing Jonathan’s body back and back, covering Jonathan’s hand with his own. Under his palm, a grape bursts. Jonathan makes a low, harsh sound into his mouth.

They move slowly, almost leisurely, in the heat of the morning. Crowley expects an urgency from Jonathan, a furtiveness, the peculiar and amusing Israelite habit of guilt. But there’s no shame, no haste; he might kiss men in his garden every day of the week, from how he leans into Crowley’s body, how he touches Crowley’s shoulders, Crowley’s hips. When Crowley pushes him down, he goes back on his elbows easily, looking up at him with a calm, unflinching lust.

Crowley doesn’t enjoy sex, as a rule. Or—that isn’t quite right. He doesn’t enjoy it with humans, the way humans do, the way Jonathan is enjoying it underneath him. There’s not enough of the animal in him—not enough of the thing that makes hearts beat, lungs heave, pupils bloom into blackness. What Crowley wants, when Crowley wants, it isn’t helpless. He isn’t helpless. He works very hard not to be.

Under him, Jonathan’s hips ride up. Crowley spreads his hands over them, presses hard into Jonathan’s skin, watches the places he touches bloom in pale starbursts. Jonathan sighs when Crowley works one long finger into him, lets his legs sprawl open. When Crowley pushes in, he digs nails into Crowley’s back, urging him forward, those long lovely eyelashes like an inkstain on his cheeks. Crowley can’t help but lean down and bite at his lip, can't help but worry it until it turns red. He isn’t violent—he isn’t crude—but he wants to mark bruises on Jonathan’s skin, smooth and beautiful as it is. He wants to author something on Jonathan’s gasping, animal body. He wants to leave traces on him of this wanting.

Jonathan rolls over, after, and stretches out on the cloth like a great cat. Crowley watches him move, the languid ease in his long limbs.

He catches Jonathan's eye and grins, until Jonathan offers him a small, soft smile back. _“Well,”_ he says. “I bet your mystery friend never did _that_ _.”_

Jonathan's face goes absolutely, terribly blank.

Crowley sits up. He feels very cold, very suddenly.

Too many things are adding themselves up in his head, too late. The way Jonathan speaks—the way _Saul_ speaks. Does Aziraphale—Aziraphale can't. Aziraphale would have told him. But—

“You love him,” he hears himself say. His voice sounds like it's coming from a great distance. “You're in love with him. David.”

Jonathan doesn’t have the good grace to look surprised. Tired, maybe. A little disappointed. “Yes,” he says. “I am.”

Crowley pushes himself away, to his feet, heedless of his near-nakedness and the stickiness drying on his legs, and walks unseeing to the edge of this enclosed part of the garden. There are red flowers blooming in the bush here, five-pointed stars studded into the greenery; at once an ornament and a wall.

“You never said anything,” he says to the leaves.

 _“I_ never said anything,” says Jonathan, behind him, and laughs a little. “All right, Remesh, if that’s how you want it. Yes. I never said anything to you.”

The flowers aren’t giving any answers. Crowley whirls, stalks back to the cloth, and throws his body down there, feeling sick and too-hot, trapped in the weight of himself, the meat of his lungs and tongue and heart.

“Why?” he says.

“Why?” Jonathan says, shakes his head. “Did it matter?”

“Did it _matter_?” Crowley echoes, disbelieving. “Did it—do you think it matters, _do_ you, whether you're in love with the man your father most wants dead? Do you think it _matters_ whether you're in love with the man who wants your throne— _your_ throne, for the record, _your_ birthright—do you think it matters to your father, to, to the army, to men who fight for you, or trust you, whether you've fallen in love with the _Enemy_ —”

Now Jonathan looks really angry. “You think I report to him?” he says.

Crowley stares.

“You think I’m just a spy in my father’s court, is that it?” says Jonathan. “Sitting at his right hand and taking his counsel and eating his food and marching with his men, for no purpose other than—than to betray him?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” says Crowley, and then, when Jonathan looks away, “No, honestly.” All his strong feeling has gone out of him as quickly as it came, leaving a nauseating emptiness in its wake. “I’m not trying to catch you in a trap. Why _wouldn’t_ you?”

The anger is draining from Jonathan’s face, but Crowley isn’t sure if he likes what’s replaced it. “You would,” he says.

Crowley opens his mouth, unsure what to say. Jonathan sits up suddenly, takes his chin in one cool hand. “You _would_ ,” he says. “You wouldn’t even think about it.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Crowley repeats, desperate and not sure why. “You’re in love. Aren’t you? Doesn’t love—conquer all? Doesn’t it make—” _humans_ , he almost says—“you do anything for it—wonderful things, terrible things—”

“Oh, Remesh,” says Jonathan, and Crowley sees in his face a clear, awful pity.

“Don’t _oh, Remesh_ me,” Crowley says, and is abruptly overcome with disgust—for Jonathan, for himself, he doesn’t know. He pushes himself away, scrabbling for his clothes.

“I ought to tell someone,” he says. “I ought to tell Saul.”

“You’re not going to tell Saul,” says Jonathan, and when Crowley doesn’t respond, catches his wrist. “You won’t.”

Crowley stops moving, but doesn’t turn his head, doesn’t look at Jonathan's face. “Why wouldn’t you go to David?” he says again. And then, quieter, “Why won’t you?”

Jonathan breathes in, out.

“You can’t live on love,” he says.

Crowley scoffs.

“No,” says Jonathan. “You can’t. The songs will tell you that you can, but singers lie. Maybe if we had the world—maybe if we had the world, and forever to live in it—but we don’t. We never will. Love, and wine, and music, and—and hope—you can fill a summer with these, you can fill Heaven, but you can’t fill a lifetime. You can’t build a life.” He looks away, at the red flowers, at the blood-dark stain of the grape on Crowley's hand. “He’s my father.”

“But he isn’t,” says Crowley, “he isn’t a good man.”

“No,” says Jonathan. “He isn’t. But he’s my father.”

“You don’t have to obey someone just because they’re your father,” says Crowley, and wants to kill his tongue. He’d nearly forgotten that this is now, this is 2754, this is Jerusalem; he’s half-believed himself into a different time, a different argument. A different garden.

But Jonathan doesn’t name Crowley's treason; he doesn’t even meet Crowley's eyes. He only smiles, small and sad. “Maybe you don’t,” he says. “But I’m going to.”

Crowley doesn't know how to reply. Jonathan stands, bending to pick up his tunic where it lies crumpled by Crowley’s hand. “You’d better get dressed,” he says. “Someone will be asking after us soon enough.”

It’s quiet in David's camp. This side of a war, soldiers are perpetually suspended between terror and boredom, flicking from the second to the first like a man nodding off to sleep. Crowley weaves between them in near-silence, sprinkling a headache here, a dulled sword there, arguments over rations and ranks and women wherever they’re likely to grow, and pauses just outside the circle of firelight.

Aziraphale has never looked at home in armour. This new iron stuff is no better; he sits like a man posing for a statue, stiff and self-conscious. David is next to him, speaking to him, his face intense and thoughtful. His sword is resting on his knees; Crowley can see how Aziraphale keeps glancing at it, almost compulsively, in what might be either fear or want.

He edges closer, and watches the moment Aziraphale spots him, how his face shatters open in delight and something like relief. He touches David’s arm, says something with _dear boy_ in it, and begins picking his way around the fire towards Crowley. Behind him, David catches Crowley’s eye and smiles at him, teeth white in the darkness. It’s an effort for Crowley to jerk his head away.

Whereas: Aziraphale certainly loves David very much. Which is to say, Aziraphale loves everyone; which is to say, Aziraphale _believes_ in love, sort of fuzzily, in the cheerful and abstract way that the angels do, in the same way that he probably believes in—in practising charity, and good works, and kindness and politeness, sometimes even at the same time; in the same way he believes in the Divine Plan, and the Divine Wisdom, and the Divine Might. Aziraphale loves humanity by the book.

Whereas Crowley, though he’s spent six weeks trying not to admit it, _likes_ Jonathan. Which is in many ways worse.

It’s the image of him there in the garden. It’s how that image blurs into memory, a chorus repeating: someone else looking at him with those same dark eyes, wiser than they had any right to be, and sadder. The knowledge of death, and of small death.

Against the weight of the nearly three thousand years Crowley’s lived, he supposes, all deaths are small. Lives, too. He’ll have to stop liking people, if he wants to keep at this. He’ll learn how one of these days.

Aziraphale reaches him at last, and clasps his forearm and kisses his cheek. “You came back,” he says.

“Yes,” says Crowley uncomfortably, “well. Should you introduce me to your—er—friends?”

“Oh,” says Aziraphale, startled, “of course. Ah. That’s Shammah, with the sort of—braids, and that’s Uriah the Hittite, over there. And you’ve met David. And.” He pauses, visibly struggling.

One of the unnamed Israelites, looking a little amused, touches his elbow. “Ezraphael,” he says, “I need your help a moment. You said you’d arbitrate us—my argument with Zelek, the length of the walls of Jericho—”

Aziraphale’s face lights up. “Sorry,” he says to Crowley, “I’ll just be a moment,” and turns away.

Crowley glances around, uncertain and awkward, and lights on a soldier. A boy, really; he can’t be more than sixteen. He’s cleaning a sword, though _sword_ is a strong word; Crowley’s seen farming tools with more ambition.

“Nice night,” he says to the boy.

The boy looks up and nods. Encouraged, Crowley adds, “Nervous?”

The silence stretches. After a minute or so, Crowley gives the boy up as shy, or mute. He glances away, trying to see if he can spot Aziraphale.

“I think I’d be more afraid, if it weren’t for God,” says the boy thoughtfully.

Crowley nearly chokes on his tongue. “You would, would you?” he manages, after too long a pause.

“I think so,” the boy says. “I guess I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve ever fought a real battle.”

“Is it,” says Crowley flatly. “I’d never have guessed. Well. In any case—”

“But it’s different with God, anyway,” the boy goes on, relentlessly. “Even—making camp, or putting on armour. So I do think it would have felt different, if I had fought already, under Saul. I think I’d be—” He makes a face. “I mean, I’m afraid anyway, obviously. But I think I’d be—different.” He touches his chest. “It’s like—you're filled up. Like you could live on it, and never need anything else. I can’t explain it. _You_ know what I mean.”

“Right,” says Crowley. “I know what you mean. 'Course.”

He looks away, and catches David’s eye again, from across the fire. The light is moving strangely over David’s face, turning the shadows of his eyes and mouth into something unreadable. If Crowley didn’t know better, he’d swear David was listening to every word he’s said.

A moment later, the king’s eyes close. As Crowley watches, he pulls his shield out from behind him, and lays it on his knees. He beats it, slow, with one flat palm: one, two, one-two-three. _And I said, oh,_ he sings, soft and sweet, _if I had the wings of a dove..._

Uriah the Hittite joins in, his voice a low rumble under David’s clear baritone. _I’d fly away, I’d fly away back home. I’d live in the wild, I’d run like the wind from the tempests and storms..._

Crowley edges back, away from the huddled men, just until he’s out of the firelight. Then he collapses down into the snake-form and shoots into the darkness like an arrow, flicking from shrub to bush to grass to the deep and shadowed roots of the trees. The stars are burning hot and hard above him, unnumbered and innumerable, the only bright things in the carapace of the sky.

Aziraphale’s footsteps come up behind him a moment later, crunching through the undergrowth. “You’re not telling me something,” he says, neither accusatory nor inquisitive; a simple statement of fact.

“There’s all sorts of things I’m not telling you,” says Crowley, anyway. “You’re the Enemy.”

Aziraphale says nothing to that, only settles beside Crowley, cross-legged in the dirt. After a moment, Crowley becomes a man again beside him, his chin on his fists.

“Have you, ever?” he says.

“Ever what?” says Aziraphale blankly.

“ _You_ know,” Crowley says. “With one of them.”

“I’m afraid I,” says Aziraphale, and then realises, and goes faintly red. “Oh. Er. Once. It wasn’t—very nice.”

Crowley dredges up a smirk from somewhere. “Not _nice?_ What, did you sweat? Did you stain your tunic? Did you rumple something?”

“No,” says Aziraphale. “Well—that part wasn’t very nice, either. It was just that—he thought I was someone I wasn’t. Or that I wasn’t something I ought to be. That an angel ought to be, I suppose. And I wasn’t sure how to be it.” He isn’t looking at Crowley. “He didn’t know me, really. Not the way—well. It just didn’t seem very fair.”

What Crowley wants to say is, _fair to who?_ But he doesn’t. Instead, he stands, and offers his hand. Aziraphale takes it easily, letting Crowley pull him to his feet. His skin is warm and soft, solid and real; if Crowley didn’t know better—but he does know better, and he always has.

He stands there for a moment, unmoving. The forest is full of night sounds: birds, insects, mice. The wind in the trees. David’s voice rising above the others, like honey and thunder: _But you were a man, you were my second self, my friend. I knew you then, I knew you. We fed on sweet secrets in God’s house once. I knew you then, I knew you..._

“He sings like an angel,” says Aziraphale. He hasn’t let go of Crowley’s hand.

“No,” says Crowley. “No, I don’t think he does.”

**Author's Note:**

> [youth pastor voice] If you like breakup songs, you'll _love_ Psalm 55: The One About How Your Ex Should Be Swallowed Up By Literal, Physical Hell! 
> 
> I've translated it very loosely here, to give it more of the feel of a modern song; a more straightforward, if less catchy, translation of the first part would be "And I said, O, that I had wings like a dove; I would fly away and lodge. Lo, I would wander/flee far, and dwell in the wilderness/desert; I would hasten my escape from the rushing/spirited wind and tempest". The second part, which is trickier and very gay, runs something like "But you, a man, my social equal/person-like-me, my friend/guide/chieftain, my confidant/person-known-to-me*; we, who together relished sweet counsels/secrets/intimacies in the house of God."
> 
> *like, known in a deep emotional way, but also yeah, Biblically.
> 
> Crowley's fake name is a very silly Hebrew joke which goes as follows: the Torah's word for crawling thing (as in, what God created on Day 6) is "remes", spelled Resh-Mem-Sin. Move one dot slightly to the right and you get "remesh", spelled Resh-Mem-Shin. So Crowley disguises himself by clearing his name of sin, ha ha. Aziraphale's fake name means "God heals, she-goat," because why not. "Kharaite" means "of the people of Mercury", and is exactly the joke you think it is.
> 
> [That "Babylonian twink" is King David!](https://art-analysis.tumblr.com/post/185932283974/lunoki-adulthoodisokay-theotherwesley)


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